Having a lot of history with Frequentis from the product side of the discussion, Airspace World brought an opportunity to meet with Karl Wannenmacher, CTO of the company. After being in the position for around a year, we began our discussion by looking at the top priorities during this time.
Cybersecurity
Not surprisingly for a CTO discussion, cybersecurity was high on his list. As the company moves towards more software products, they are developing their cyber experience within the organisation to build and support the right strategy for this migration. In order to do so, the team has been expanded to include a CISO, CSO, Risk Manager, Security Project Manager and more roles throughout the company value chain.
Critical infrastructure is under attack from bad actors, and these organisations are their clients. As NIS2 regulation comes into play, not only the critical infrastructure clients but also the vendors need to be prepared. The NIS2 and the Cyber Resilience Act are important topics for software vendors in the EU. Products need to be certified as to their ‘cyber fitness’ and within aviation the EASA DPO process must be adhered to for ground-based equipment.
Just a short side step regarding NIS2 and the Cyber Resilience Act if readers are not familiar with these terms. The Network and Information Security 2 (NIS2) Directive is the EU’s updated cybersecurity framework, aiming to enhance the resilience of critical infrastructures and essential services across member states. The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is an EU regulation that aims to enhance cybersecurity for products with digital elements, ensuring they are more secure from the design stage to the end of their lifecycle.
Cross-industry lessons learned
Karl was originally within the Public Safety organisation in Frequentis before moving into this position. We discussed synergies between Public Safety and ATM, and there are many, and this was a surprise for him. These are both industries who rely on mission-critical networks. Public Safety is years ahead of ATM in the use of cloud technology, containers, orchestration and agile updates focusing on many small updates vs fewer large updates. These are learning that are now migrating into ATM through programmes like the CATS CONOPS and the ATM Masterplan.
ANSP challenges and solutions
The technology challenges facing ANSPs are not to be underestimated as they move from legacy solutions to new service modes of operation. But this isn’t all about the technology. The resources and the budget to migrate also need to be considered. As the industry evolves and traffic grows with new airspace entrants, consider the budget implications over the next 20 years. This needs to be addressed at the industry level. The SESAR JU has been successful in putting forth a wider framework for funding, but the ANSPs need more control as to where the funding goes.
As technology evolves it’s important to not reinvent the wheel for infrastructure. Some existing technology that can play an important role in this evolution include cloud-native technology built with open source interfaces, migration and enhancing domain logic, and moving to service-oriented architectures (SoA). This is already a huge step forward. The industry needs to stop treating systems as monolithic and be more pragmatic with certification.
New entrants – aircraft and technology
ANSPs will play a critical role in drone management. As more drones enter the airspace it is a requirement for deconfliction to be fully automated. There is a great deal of innovation going on in the startups servicing the business (or industrial) side of the drone market. With Cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) allowing for subscription-based offers, these markets can move quickly and be a driving force in the ATM space.
As far as technology, the top contenders to influence ATM in the future are:
- Cloud-native capabilities
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) – everything that can be accomplished through the potential for AI to provide specific-use applications, path optimisation, deconfliction and past event processing
- Microsoft Quantum – very fast processing which could help with optimisation.
We ended our discussion with my favorite question in technical discussions. What is the technology you’re most excited about right now, either professionally or at the business level? “It’s all about AI in my everyday life. I haven’t done a web search in the last 12 months. Yet we should use AI with caution as we’re still in the learning phase.”
